WEBVTT

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"From the outset, certain
parallels were striking.

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For it concerned a
certain child born

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in a certain very primitive,
Paleolithic village somewhere.

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Just where, he did not know.

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This was undoubtedly a part
of the narratives protasis

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or exposition,
which he had missed

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by finding himself forced to
fly standby and entering en,

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as it were, medias res.

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On the United leg.

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The sense he got was of
a certain extraordinarily

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primitive, Third World jungle or
rainforest region of the world,

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perhaps Asia or South
America, and so terrifically

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long ago as to be literally
Paleolithic or perhaps

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Mesolithic, as, of course,
the anthropological origins

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of genres like this
nearly always are.

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The context in which my own
friend then subsequently

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had it related to him
by his acquaintance

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was, if possible, he said,
even more banal and unexpected

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than a commercial airline
flight, as if somehow

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the quotidian and, as it
were, modern everydayness

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of the narrative circumstances
made its archetypal parallels

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even more remarkable.

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But he also emphasized extremely
primitive and Paleolithic,

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as in spears and crude lean-tos,
and pantheistic shamanism,

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and an extremely primitive
hunting and gathering mode

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of subsistence.

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And in a certain
isolated village

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deep in the region's
rainforest, apparently

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a certain child is
born who emerges

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as one of these extraordinarily
high-powered, supernaturally

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advanced human specimens who
come along in every culture

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every once in a great
while, as history shows.

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Although he said the
younger airline passenger,

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whom he surmised might have
been a corporate or academic

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scientist, did not use the word
'supernatural' or 'messianic'

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or any of the other terms
the cycle usually reserves

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for specimens like this--"
It's just that I'm [INAUDIBLE]

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"--instead using terms such
as 'advanced,' 'brilliant' or

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'ingenious' and describing the
child's exceptional qualities

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and career almost exclusively
in terms of cognitive ability,

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raw IQ.

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Because he said, apparently,
at a very young age,

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an age at which most of
the village's children

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were just beginning to
learn the very basic customs

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and behaviors that the
primitive village expected

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of its citizens, this two or
perhaps three-year-old child

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was already evincing and
ability to answer absolutely

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any question put to it.

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To answer correctly,
accurately, comprehensively.

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Even very difficult or
even paradoxical questions.

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Of course, the full
range and depth

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of the child's
interrogatory intelligence

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were not manifested
for some time,

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thus their emergence serves
as the archetypal Threshold

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Experience, and occupies
much of the protasis.

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That at first, the ability seems
simply a novelty, something

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for its parents to, so
to speak, dine out on,

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and amuse the other
villagers with.

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Something on the order of,
'Look, our two-year-old knows

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how many twigs you have
if you hold 5 twigs,

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and then pick up 3 more twigs.'

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Until of course, one of the
parents' amused neighbors

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happens to say or ask something
that prompts the child

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to disclose that it also
knows everything culturally

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important about each individual
twig the fellow happens

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to be holding.

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Such as, for example,
the village's

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official and idiomatic names
for the trees the twigs derived

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from, and the various
pantheistic deities

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and religious significance of
each species of relevant tree.

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As well as which ones
have edible leaves or bark

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that eased fever if
boiled and so on,

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including which species'
grain and tensile

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flexion were especially
good for spear shafts,

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and the small cytotoxic darts
the villages of this region

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used with crude reed
blowguns to defend themselves

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against the tropical
rain forest's predacious

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jaguars, which are
apparently the scourge

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of the Paleolithic third
world, and the leading

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statistical cause of
death after disease

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and inter-tribal warfare.

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After which, of
course, in short order,

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after reports of the remarkable
twig prelection get about,

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the parents and other
primitive villagers

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begin regarding the child's
intelligence in a wholly

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different sphere, it emerges
that the child is also

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capable of answering all manner
of both trivial and profoundly

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non-trivial questions."